What Are You Good For

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father — the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

My sermon title asks, what are you good for? Are we the kind of people who are only good for exalting ourselves like those mentioned in the text. Or, are we good for God and for others by being humble servants? We’ll come back to this question at the very end.

Have you read a good lately? A novel or even a nonfiction book that tells a good story? When we sit down to read a good book, we read it at length. We sometimes call such books “page-turners.” We get so caught up in them that we can’t put them down and we read page after page after page, sometimes late into the night.

I mention this in contrast to the way we tend to read the Good Book, the Bible. We tend to read the Bible in dribs and drabs, a paragraph here and a verse there. Many devotional booklets, for example, like Our Daily Bread that we make available on the table just outside the sanctuary, will quote a verse or two and follow that with a paragraph related to the verse. Sometimes the words about the scripture verses are longer than the verses themselves. I do not imply that this is just your problem and not mine also. My reading of the Bible also tends to be in snippets: get ready for this sermon on this text, prepare for that Bible study, read a few verses devotionally before praying — Bible in bits, we might say.

There is nothing wrong with this. It’s always good to read scripture regardless of how it comes to us. However, there is a weakness in this kind of Bible reading, if it is the only way that we read it, because we can miss the story. We miss the larger picture. Especially in the gospels we miss that the story was written to be read like a good novel, not because it is fiction but because the story of Jesus is truer than either fiction or fact. It is true to life and true to God and we see that best when we read it whole. (Which is, by the way, one of the reasons why on the bulletin’s announcement page we list long passages for your suggested reading of the Bible.)

So having said this, let me remind us of where today’s text fits into the story of Jesus as Matthew tells it. Two chapters ago at the beginning of Matthew 21, Jesus prepares to enter Jerusalem on what we’ve come to call Palm Sunday. That began, of course, the final week of Jesus’ earthly life. We speak of what happened that week as the Passion of our Lord and if you read the gospels as a whole, you might notice something very interesting about the Passion. The events described all happened in a one week but the telling of that week takes up a big percentage of the gospels. In fact, one-third of all the verses in the four gospels are used for the last week of Jesus’ life and ministry.[1] This is important because it means that everything before the Passion story is there to prepare us for that one week in which Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead.

So like a good hunting dog which circles around or crosses back and forth to sniff out its prey, we can pick up the scent of Jesus’ story by circling back to just before the Passion section. When we do that in Matthew, Mark, and John (Luke is somewhat different at this point), we find that the issue is one of seeing: seeing who Jesus really is and seeing ourselves and the world in a way that only Jesus can help us see.

This is very explicit in Matthew. As Jesus leaves Jericho to go to Jerusalem, he meets two blind men. They call out to him and he asks what they want him to do. They said, “Let our eyes be opened.” And Matthew tells us that Jesus was moved with compassion and touched their eyes and immediately they regained their sight and followed him.

That’s what the story is about: seeing Jesus, calling out to him, seeing that only he can do what we most need in life, letting him open up our eyes and following him …

The whole story in chapters 21 and 22 has been told in the third person: Matthew is narrating the story, describing the conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders. The story is going along about the Pharisees.

But YOU. All of a sudden, with no warning whatsoever, the story switches from third to second person. You. Me. Us. You and I are not to be like Pharisees.

That’s Jesus talking and it’s also Matthew talking to his community 50 years after the Passion because it was a problem in his church. And we need to hear these words as spoken to us today, dear friends, because it’s a problem for us too. We must not read this and other texts like it just as diatribes against those nasty, bad Pharisees. Reading this way just makes us the hypocrites against whom Jesus was speaking. The text warns you and me about our own sinful pride.

It does so by mentioning phylacteries and fringes — somewhat unfamiliar terms for us. Phylacteries were little leather pouches in which were placed tiny pieces of paper with scripture and prayers written on them, prayers which would be recited throughout the day. These pouches were tied around one’s forehead or left arm as a reminder to pray constantly. So to wear a large phylactery was to impress others with how many prayers one made and, therefore, how pious one was. Fringes were the decorations on the shawls worn when praying. Long, ornate fringes would call attention to one’s prayer shawl and, therefore, to what a faithful prayer one must be. Even prayer can become a source of pride.

Pride can come out in anything, in prayer, in giving, in moral behavior, in religious duty, even in being proud about being humble. It can come out in anything and Jesus warns against it, a warning we must take very seriously.

For example, do you ever get annoyed at people who always find a way to tell you how busy they are, how many meetings they have to go to, or how many conflicts they have in the schedule? Do you ever get bothered by people who somehow communicate how much they give and what a sacrifice it is? Do you know people who tell you about their kids or their jobs or their vacations and you get the feeling that most of all they are trying to impress you? I bump into these people and these things really annoy me and I try to not do these things and, ah … now my pride is getting the better of me.

To be annoyed at these things in others and to presume that I am better assumes that I can see into their hearts and know their motives. But I can’t really. Maybe they tell me how busy they are not to impress but because they are out of control. Maybe they want someone to notice their generosity not to impress but because they feel insecure and unappreciated. Maybe they share things about their lives not to impress but hoping someone will just notice them. When these things annoy me, I’m judging without being able to see into the motives of their hearts.

But if I’m honest, I can see into my own heart and I find there a room with a nameplate on its door that says “Billy’s Pride.” And in that room hang many costumes of pride — my own forms and styles of fringes and phylacteries — and I don’t need to wait for Halloween to dress up in these costumes. The room is called Billy’s Pride. I am not often called Billy as an adult. But the pride is Billy’s pride because pride is a childish thing. Some of these are costumes I’ve been wearing for a long time and somehow I still manage to fit myself into them. They are the costumes that say “me first” just like a two-year-old only now as an adult they say “me better.” I’m better than you. I give better, I pray better, I serve better, I love better, I’m better, I’m better, I’m better.

Jesus tells me and all his disciples to look within our hearts and to realize how much of what we say and do is just dressing up in costumes of pride. It does not matter what we do or say. It does not matter what we give. If we have pride that puts us first and others last or us up and others down, then we have missed what our Lord expects of us because we have ignored the problem of pride.[2]

The only remedy for pride is servanthood. That’s why Jesus said, “The greatest among you will be your servant.” The only greatness that really counts for anything is the greatness of serving others. Servanthood is what Jesus expects of us.

I was recently reminded of this when I read in an old diary about a conference I attended some years ago at the Catherine Spaulding Retreat Center in Bardstown, Kentucky. Sister Catherine Spaulding founded this particular order of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth back in the early 1800s.

I read in my diary that after I arrived at the conference I went for a walk around the grounds. The air was warm, unusually so because it was the first weekend in November. The hills of western Kentucky were ablaze in leafy glory: golds and yellows and reds and browns. The trees and alternating open spaces of still green grass seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see. A small pond was clustered by trees near one boundary and from it a gentle stream flowed through the vast grounds. At the center were several large stone buildings of various architectural styles, some dating back well into the 1800s. These held the retreat center, a college, a convent, and a church.

Near the church, at the crest of a little rise was the cemetery. At the center was a huge stone cross and all around it were row after row of gravestones. Most marked the graves of nuns. Some were for priests who had served the convent. I saw one for a bishop and several for mother superiors. Some stones had three dates: birth, ordination, and death — the three most important days of those persons’ lives. But most just noted the date of death: Sister Ignatia Murphy, 1946; Sister Mary Pius Casey, 1890; Sister Clementine O’Brien, 1887; Sister Harriet Gardiner, 1826. Given the beauty of that day, the glory of the land around, and the poignancy of that place, I was moved deeply as I wandered up and down the rows of the cemetery.

Later that evening we were welcomed by Sister Margaret Spaulding, a relative of the convent’s founder. She told how the sisters were glad that we were there. She said not only would the they do all they could to make our stay pleasant but that as a part of their ministry they were praying for us and had been praying for us ever since they knew we were coming — months before.

Then she said something that riveted my attention. She said, “There have been a lot of prayers for you because we are 1,500 strong.” My immediate reaction was the convent seemed large but not that large. Then I realized what she meant. The large majority of those 1,500 were sisters whose earthly remains lay in the graves by which I had earlier walked. In Catholic theology, the saints who have passed beyond this world continue to pray and intercede for us. “We serve you,” said Sister Margaret, “because this is holy ground.”

I don’t know if Catholic theology is true and whether departed saints literally pray for us. As a card-carrying Protestant, I would have to say “I don’t think so.” But I do know that the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth were faithful servants. They gave of themselves in love. The prayers they offered for us and the material things they did for us were of no benefit to themselves. But they served because serving is what you do when you live on holy ground. And their servanthood touched me then and all of us who were there, and the memory of it still blesses me years later.

We do not need to be in a convent to live on holy ground. Holy ground is wherever and whenever we exalt humility and find greatness in serving others.

So back to the beginning. What are we good for? In humility, we are good for making holy the ground upon which we walk. May all that we do and say make this a congregation of people who are living and serving on holy ground, in Jesus’ name. Amen

[1] As many have noted, the gospels are really passion stories with introductions. In Matthew, 8 of 28 chapters are passion. In Mark, 6 of 16, in Luke, 5.5 of 24, and in John, 9 of 21. Of the 3,767 verses in the gospels, 32.1% are devoted to Passion Week and afterwards.

[2] Typically, Barth’s reflections are quite insightful. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. IV, 1, G. W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1962) 618-621. Faith, we have said, is wholly and utterly humility. To put it negatively, it takes place in faith that man’s affirmation and approval of his pride, his satisfaction with it, is completely destroyed. Not that he will finally amend himself in faith. It is the sinful man, the proud man, who believes. But in believing he has nothing more to do with his pride, with himself as the proud man he is. He has no further use for himself as such. And therefore he has no use — primarily and finally — for any kind of pride of faith. Faith is the abdication of vain-glorious man from his vain-glory. We do not say, his liberation from it, its defeat and destruction. It would be the supreme triumph of vain-glorious man if he could just control his vain-glory, exercising it one minute and then suddenly or gradually shaking it off like the snow on his hat. That would be the new pride in which man would only show that he has not yet begun to believe. No, even in the believer we have to do with very vain-glorious man. The only thing is that — although he still exercises vain-glory — he has acquired a distaste, a radical and total distaste for it. The only thing is that he cannot find any more pleasure in what he does as vain-glorious man, that he despairs of himself as this man. He no longer expects anything of what he does as such. He sees the corruption of his utterly proud action. He sees that he will not attain what he continually hopes from it. He sees into what trouble it is bringing him, that at the end of all his vain-glorious ways — the vain-glorious ways of all men — disillusionment awaits him, ridicule, defeat, meaninglessness, indeed nonsense and contradiction, destruction, nothingness and death.”